as had
been one of Miss Todd's more favored suitors. Douglas in those days had
no great opinion of the tall young lawyer; while Lincoln is said to have
described Douglas as "the least man I ever saw"--although that referred
to his rival's small stature and boyish figure, not to his mental
qualities. Douglas was not only ambitious to be President: he had staked
everything on the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and his statement
that this question of slavery was one that every State and Territory
must settle for itself, but with which the Federal Government had
nothing to do. Unfortunately, his own party no longer agreed with him.
Since Buchanan had become President the Democrats had advanced their
ground. They now claimed that while a State might properly say whether
or not it would tolerate slavery, slavery ought to be lawful in all the
Territories, no matter whether their people liked it or not.

A famous law case, called the Dred Scott case, lately decided by the
Supreme Court of the United States, went far toward making this really
the law of the land. In its decision the court positively stated that
neither Congress nor a territorial legislature had power to keep slavery
out of any United States Territory. This decision placed Senator Douglas
in a most curious position. It justified him in repealing the Missouri
Compromise, but at the same time it absolutely denied his statement that
the people of a Territory had a right to settle the slavery question to
suit themselves. Being a clever juggler with words, he explained away
the difference by saying that a master might have a perfect right to his
slave in a Territory, and yet that right could do him no good unless
it were protected by laws in force where his slave happened to be.
Such laws depended entirely on the will of the people living in
the Territory, and so, after all, they had the deciding voice. This
reasoning brought upon him the displeasure of President Buchanan and all
the Democrats who believed as he did, and Douglas found himself forced
either to deny what he had already told the voters of Illinois, or to
begin a quarrel with the President. He chose the latter, well knowing
that to lose his reelection to the Senate at this time would end his
political career. His fame as well as his quarrel with the President
served to draw immense crowds to his meetings when he returned to
Illinois and began speech-making, and his followers so inspired these
meetings